How Often Do You Replace Your Hard Drives?

Telemachas asks: "I recently purchased a Dell P4 2.8 GHz swap meet computer with a 200 gig hard disk for a good price and all is working fine. It does not seem prudent, however, to trust my data on a swap meet item. For another @ $ 75.00 each I can purchase new 200 gig HDDs. I would also like to do my first RAID system. I am now wondering how often, if at all, do Slashdot readers replace their HDDs?"

Comments

Uhh...

[Omeger]

When they break?

Re:Uhh...

[matt74441]

I second that. I like to avoid wasting money whenever possible, but thats just me...

Re:Uhh...

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course. For HDDs the Time Between Failure distribution is just too broad.

If you replace them on a schedule, you're still not guaranteed 100% reliability because a drive can fail way before MTBF, and you waste the drives that wouldn't fail if you had kept them. Seems like a lose-lose situation to me.

So backup often, or use RAID. Replace the HDDs when they break.

Re:Uhh...

[Propaganda13]

I was just pointing it out since some people think RAID is a good replacement for backups. Here's some reasons already listed why RAID isn't backup. http://ask.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=206854&cid =16865466
Plus corruption of the data caused by OS, application, hardware, etc. In these cases, you'll end up with multiple dead drives, multiple copies of corrupted data, or no data at all.

There are backup solutions even for the lazy. :D Over the years, I've learned not to trust hardware or backups.

Re:Uhh...

[Silver Sloth]

Seriously. The older a drive is, in my experience the less likely it is to die. The first six months are the worst.

This is known as the bathtub curve. If you plot failures against time then there is a high level at the beginning (the tap end) which decreases quickly as any weak or substandard components fail. Then there is a long flat bit as everything runs as normal with a (hopefully) low chance failure rate. Finally, as the components reach their end of life the failure rate begins to rise giving the shape (well, use your imagination) of a bathtub.

With hard drives the far end of the bathtub tends to be obscured by obsolescence.

Re:Uhh...

[EnderWigginsXenocide]

I would NOT trust a single box (no matter how many HDDS) to be a safe place for must-have data. You have backups and that is good.

I had a power supply start putting out 18 volts on the 12 volt rail and smoke two HDDs in the same box. (It had one HDD . . . I replaced it . . . the replacement died quickly.) Had that machine been a 12 bay monster I would have lost 12 HDDs. For me there was no-big loss because all I lost was the HDD itself and the time it took to re-install the OS and software. Data was drag-and-dropped across the network.

Instead I mirror my data to two other Boxes (2 at home, 1 offsite at work.) Truely critical things (Family photos, home videos) are also backed up to multilpe DVD copies and sent to family members (they think I am sharing, but they are just offsite backup :P)

Re:Uhh...

[EnderWigginsXenocide]

Many people use a single external drive as a backup. The drive sits next to the PC it is backing up. A fire/flood/whatever can take them both out.

If you're going to use a HDD as a backup make sure you have multilpe copies (say three) with at least two being offsite. That way if your home/worksite is destroyed your data is on two other HDDs away from the calamity. It is unlikely that two HDDs will fail at the same time, but just having one HDD for irreplaceable data is just a big risk.

Do Raid 1, replace when 1 goes down

[Salvance]

For home, I never replace a drive unless one goes down. I just have one drive backup to the other (and vice versa) at night, then store my important files at work.

At work, we have everything setup as Raid 1, and only replace drives when they go down, which is rarely. Not sure if this is the best approach, but considering we take offsite incremental backups every 15 minutes it's not really a catastrophic event even if both go down.

Replace them when they blow up.

[Spit]

And recover them from the backup. You do make backups don't you?

Yeah, this is pretty subjective

[webheaded]

I've got drives older than I am sitting around that still work. Granted I don't use them anymore, but they ran for quite some time.

As most people have said, the best thing to do is backup a lot, and replace it when it starts to go bad. If it starts making loud crazy noises, chances are its on its last leg. If you get random boot errors...same thing. Basically, when it starts fucking up, its probably time for a replacement, but beyond that...well...just ride it out. Don't spend money you don't need to spend just to keep on a schedule. As long as you back up things that are terribly important you should not have a problem.

For the 80 gigs of pr0n well...its not like you watch ALL of it anymore anyway right? You're gonna get new porn regardless so its probably not a huge loss if that all goes down with your HDD. Then again, they are coming out with some rather large new removeable formats (Blu-ray or HDDVD) so maybe its not as hard to backup as you'd think. ;)

Right

[XanC]

The redundancy buys you reduced downtime in the event of most failures. Go with multiple RAIDs in different systems (or cities!) for backup.

Until they make odd noises

[seebs]

Until they start sounding funny, generally, but I always make backups of real data.

Re:Um, never

[Procyon101]

My experience is that new drives have a higher failure rate than drives in service for years. If I were to replace my drives as a matter of course, I have a feeling I would spend more time recovering from lemons than I would had I left the old drives in.

Don't be so abrasive

[Anonymous Coward]

...It's not 'incredibly stupid'. A question is a question. Just answer it if you have an answer, otherwise, shut up.

Re:Never Understood

[EnderWigginsXenocide]

I'm a Mac user and my hard drives have lasted.... Umm Forever(+5 years)
Wait scratch that, One drive died in a power surge when I yanked the cords
to save the computer from a burning building (don't ask)
But I read about windows users replacing drives every year or so...
Now Apple uses IBM Drives and I've always upgraded with the same
are they just better or is HFS HFS+ just that much gentler on the disks than FAT16 and FAT32

I'm a PC user. I have lost two HDDs (in the same machine) to a faulty power supply. The HDD went out, I replaced it. The replacement went out in short order(hours.) I pulled the swapped the mo-bo with a known good one and put a multimeter across the opwer supply. 18 volts on the 12 volt rail. Glad I didn't just throw in ANOTHER HDD based on the asumption that the mo-bo was the only potentialy bad component.

Other than they I buy new HDDs when they fill up.

I put old ones out of service when they feel restrictive in their capacity.

I have four boxes (work, home, laptop, game system.) The Work, Home, and Game machines have HDD#1 in the 40-80GB range for the OS drive. HDD#2 varries in size from 120-200GB. The Home box has a third HDD, a 200GB model. The laptop has the factory 20GB drive.

As the drives get crowded I replace them with larger (and usualy lower price) HDDs. The old storage/media HDDs get turned into OS drives. My most valueable data (Home Videos, Photos, work stuff) are duplicated on at least two drives in each machine. When a file is updated on the home or game system it will be copied to the 2nd HDD in the machine. If the matching file on the other machine is not changed then the new update on the file is copied to the HDDs of the other machine.

Matching the Work machine to the Home and Game systems involves drag-and-drop and a smaller USB HDD.

My system is probably not typical. The Game system is also our HTPC and the HOME system is the bittorent machine. They really use up disk space. The mirroring of critical files in a non-raid system of multiple HDDS is also not likely to be typical; I don't trust anything important to a single HDD or even to multiple HDDs in the same box(after having a Power Supply fry HDDs.)

I also backup my files on a monthly basis to DVD.

I donate my "discarded" HDDs when I put them out of service. Usualy I keep a HDD in service for two to four years. Although the 200GB drive on the bittorent machine is a little tight for space . . . if you think of "only" 30GB free as short on space.

All the machines use FAT16 or 32. Other than the PS incident I have yet to have a HDD fail.